The continuing advancements and developments in production technology have lead to continually faster and more efficient processing machines and automated production cells. Developments in production have forced the article transfer technology to simultaneously advance in order to provide faster, more efficient production equipment with fewer parts. In so doing, article transfer systems have become faster, more efficient and highly advanced.
Advancements in article transfer technology can be expensive, such as with the advent of programmable robotic systems, servo motor drives, CNC controllers, etc. Such systems may exhibit state of the art technologies, but in the highly competitive manufacturing environment, such systems may be inappropriate, over-qualified and/or too expensive. For example, an article transfer apparatus that simply moves an article from one location to another without a high degree of precision and/or repeatability does not require highly advanced equipment to perform such an operation. Also, hostile and contaminated environments may not be practical for such highly advanced technology since such equipment may be overly sensitive to noise, vibration, dirt, etc.
Thus, it would be desirable to provide an inexpensive, durable and reliable article transfer apparatus for transferring articles from one location to another in a manufacturing environment.